Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.

Illinois’ Constitutional amendment.

In a presidential election year most of the attention is at the top of the ballot.

Then voters will pay some attention to contested congressional elections.

Who in Illinois will know what they are voting on when they get a separate ballot for Constitutional Amendment 49?

Not many.

Speaker of the House Michael Madigan knew what he was doing when he had the House vote unanimously to put this on the ballot, joined by a three fifths of the Senate. Even so-called progressives, like north shore Representative Robyn Gabel, signed off on this one.

But if three fifths of those voting in November agree, the Illinois state constitution will be amended to require three fifths approval of a governing body in order to increase a benefit covered by any public pension or retirement system.

What’s counts as a benefit?

Terms like “benefit increase,” “emolument increase,” and “beneficial determination” will all end up being litigated.

Does it include a simple cost of living increase? If the CA49 passes, along with the other threatened benefit cuts, this will all end up in court.

Nope. Court isn’t free but Madigan can then say it is not his problem anymore and he will be free of that part of the pension issue. He is handing it off to the courts. Meanwhile, retirees will be hurt. Not that it matters to Madigan and his ilk. He is only interested in getting rid of these pesky pensions. Shove them onto local school boards. Give them to the courts to fight about. Anybody but him, the one who casued the problem in the first place. Madigan is another example of an Eddie Haskell. Dishonest to the core and then tries to get others to take the blame and solve the problems.

“I continue to personally and professionally believe that to administer PARCC this year is absolutely not in the best interest of our students." -- Byrd-BennettRahm Emanuel looked befuddled as he hemmed and hawed last Thursday when Phil Ponce asked him straight-up -- Should CPS administer the PARCC test? I knew then that despite Byrd-Bennett's prot […]

- Fred Klonsky, SORE President The Illinois Education Association was founded in 1853. It became an affiliate of the National Education Association in 1857. In 1966 the NEA and the African American American Teachers Association merged. We also merged in Illinois. The NEA essentially removed administrators from leadership and became a union in 1970. Over the […]

“…Aside from the obvious fact that the possible existence of redundancy in other contexts does not mean that a redundancy was intended here, the defendants' argument overlooks the fact that ‘diminished or impaired’ is phrased in the disjunctive, unlike all of the examples of redundancies that the defendants provide. ‘As used in its ordinary sense, the w […]

Rep. Elaine Nekritz: The Audacity of…(well, …the audacity)Falling snow, polar vortices, unending darkness, and listening to Representative Elaine Nekritz on the radio defending the indefensible…this truly is the winter of my discontent.On the other hand, legal teams representing the public sector workers are providing opening arguments before the Illinois Su […]

Tomorrow is the first day of PARCC out where I work. How's it going to go?I have no clue. We've never once successfully logged a grade level onto the Infrastructure Trial. Maybe 40% of a grade level.I've done little else for six weeks. In a way, PARCC has been good for me because I've learned so much about UNIX and working in the terminal […]

PEORIA, IL -- Three candidate forums sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Greater Peoria are are scheduled for next week, for candidates in the April 7 municipal elections. The first is on March 7, for candidates for the...

I keep getting a lot of email from UFT about how March 9th is a "week of action." We're going to wear a special color, or hold hands at our school, and take a photo. I don't mind cooperating. It's not a whole lot to ask. I'm not completely sure, though, that it will accomplish much.More to the point, if next week is a week of ac […]

The resistance to the PARCC -- the new, standardized, computerized tests being administered in New Jersey beginning this month -- continues to grow. Parents, teachers, and students are rightly concerned that these tests are taking too much time, are unnecessarily complex and confusing, disadvantage students with less access to technology, and narrow the curr […]

Did you know the New York City Department of Education still grants study sabbaticals? Well, they do. I took one last year. I know two people on them this year. And the application for next year has been posted, and is due in just a few weeks. Here’s the DoE’s sabbatical page (very little explanation): […]

This is one of the strangest political alignments ever: George W. Bush put annual testing into federal law, a practice unknown in the high-performing nations of the world. And Democrats–including President Obama, Secretary Duncan, and Washington State Senator Patti Murray–are fighting to keep George W. Bush’s policy in place. In the case of Senator Murray, [ […]

Who will be the next superintendent of the Boston Public Schools (and who really gets to decide???) It’s a bird. No–it’s a plane. No–it’s actually snow. Why it’s snowing men, reader! Four men to be precise, each of whom longs to lead the Boston Public Schools. But first these *he’s* must make their way through […]

Last month I wrote about an attempt in Anaheim, CA to privatize the management of another public school, using the so-called Parent Trigger law.The law, which turns parent against parent in a community, gives a temporary majority, who are willing (often cajoled) to sign a petition, the power to hand their public school over to a private company. That company […]